When it comes to thinking about why civilizations fail to preserve liberty and avoid decline, and sometimes total collapse, it really boils down to the following root cause; the people, which will be interchangeable with the word citizens for the rest of this essay, fail to understand the proper relationships that they’re supposed to have with their fellow human beings. Human relationships take many forms; ones we have with our parents, siblings, and even extended family from birth, the ones we have with our friends, ones we have with our employers and colleagues, and among them, the ones we have with government. It is imperative to understand that government, like companies and corporations, is a group of human beings. Government is not some sentient being or machines, but fundamentally, a collection of human beings with very specific roles in civilization: among them, preserving the proper relationship that government must have with the citizens, and vice-versa. If either the government or the citizens fail to act in accordance with their proper relationship with each other, then the relationship inevitably fails, regardless of how long it takes, such as imminently in the case of civilizations like Cuba and North Korea, or gradually such as the cases of civilizations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America; in the case of the latter four, the COVID-19 lock-downs, restrictions and mandates have been what has violated the proper relationship between the governments and citizens of those respective countries. That gets to the fundamental thesis; the proper relationship that the government must maintain with the people is to protect the people’s liberties and fundamental individual rights under ALL circumstances. That is all there is to the relationship, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing different; whenever the government deviates from acting in accordance with this relationship, the relationship between government and the citizens is doomed to inevitably fail. When the relationship between government and the citizens fails, civilization either totally collapses or falls under tyranny; tyranny at its core is the absence of the full protections of the citizen’s liberties and individual rights. There is no exception whatsoever to this essential rule regarding the human relationship between government and the citizens; the government must absolutely never take any action that violates the people’s rights or liberties. This gets to the main sub-thesis; even the tiniest deviation or exception to acting in accordance with this relationship will lead to the inevitable downfall of civilization, regardless of how long it takes.
This is therefore fundamentally the root cause of all the problems relating to the tyranny associated with the COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates and restrictions. Although the government, and the enablers among the wealthiest media outlets, have declared a public health emergency, there is absolutely no justification for the proper relationship between government and the citizens to be violated, even under those circumstances. The COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates, and restrictions violate that proper relationship between government and the citizens; applying this test to decide whether to proceed with COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates, and restrictions should exist is fundamental, if civilization is to have even the smallest chance of ever seeing a permanent end to the COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates, and restrictions. However, the vast majority of citizens, as well as the majority of elected officials, make excuses to even think about how these COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates, and restrictions violate the proper relationship between government and the citizens, which brings the probability of seeing a permanent end to the COVID-19 lock-downs, mandates, and restrictions closer and closer to zero.
The majority of people tend to believe that it is either acceptable, reasonable, or wise to compromise the relationship between government and the citizens by violating at least some liberties and rights to achieve particular outcomes. The people, both inside and outside the government, point the finger at societal ills such as poverty, crime, and disease, such as COVID-19, as problems that the government has both the obligation and ability to solve. The reality is, government has no obligation to solve problems such as poverty or disease. Furthermore, along with crime, the government has no ability to fully and permanently eliminate poverty or disease; these sorts of societal ills will most likely always exist in some capacity, and it is up to the people to determine how best to solve these problems, without violating the rights and liberties of any other individuals. Like the government, every individual citizen must always respect the liberties and fundamental individual rights of other citizens and non-citizens too. Like the relationship between the people in government and the citizens, the relationship that every citizen has to every other citizen and non-citizens too entails the absolute respect for the liberties and fundamental individual rights of all other human beings under absolutely all circumstances with absolutely no exception to this rule. Certainly, compromising people’s sacrosanct liberties and fundamental individual rights, and consequently violating the proper relationship between government and the people, will not guarantee the intended elimination of societal ills, such as poverty, crime, and disease. Many times, violating people’s liberties and rights actually makes such societal ills worse. It is but a pretense and a delusion that government has either the obligation or ability to eliminate those sorts of problems. Furthermore, there are so many different, and sometimes conflicting, perceptions and standards of poverty, crime, and disease that it is impossible for government’s actions to deal with these problems in ways that satisfy everybody. Outcomes, especially the elimination of general societal ills like crime, disease, and poverty, are NEVER guaranteed, regardless of how much liberty and rights the government chooses to violate or suppress to achieve these ends. Therefore, liberty and fundamental individual rights should never be violated, even in the hope of achieving such noble ends; what can and should be guaranteed is a certain and permanent protection of liberty and fundamental individual rights because again, this is the proper relationship that the government absolutely must maintain at absolutely all times with the citizens. Any time that this relationship is not maintained, civilization fails, and sometimes totally collapses, as in the cases of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
Now let’s talk about the relationship that the citizens must maintain with the government. As explained earlier, the government must refrain from ever violating anybody’s liberties or fundamental individual rights. The citizens have this same duty and relationship with other citizens and non-citizens too. As such, the citizens have a duty to never demand or call upon the government to violate liberties or fundamental individual rights UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE; this duty is what should be acknowledged as Civic Duty. As touched upon earlier, citizens tend to have a temptation to call upon the government to achieve noble ends like the elimination of poverty and ensuring everyone receives good quality health care. This is because doing so defers the responsibility of individuals and citizens to solve these issues to the government, mainly because such deferral of responsibility entails less energy and work needed by the citizens and individuals; in other words, it’s the lazy option. After all, if the government can be called upon to solve problems, and if doing so would require less effort and energy to achieve such ends and objectives, why would it make sense to not call upon the government to solve the problems rather than spend my own finite energy and efforts to do so? While this is the attitude that the vast majority of people tend to have, the answer to the question is the following – because it violates the fundamental relationship that the government and citizens must maintain with each other at all times and under every circumstance. Therefore, the relationship that the citizens must maintain with the government is to refrain from ever calling upon the government to violate liberties or fundamental individual rights under any circumstance. When the people violate this relationship and act in discord with it by calling for the government to take actions like confiscate money from wealthier citizens to give it to poorer ones, it sends a false and dangerous signal to the government that it now has permission from the citizens to violate liberty and fundamental individual rights, and consequently, also violate the proper relationship between the citizens and government. As stated and explained before, when either the citizens or government fail to accord with the proper relationship that should be maintained between the citizens and government, the relationship eventual fails; when this relationship fails, so too does civilization, which, at the very least, results in tyranny and, at the very worst, results in the collapse and end of civilization, with ancient Greece and ancient Rome serving as very salient examples.
To make a connection between the relationship that individual citizens have with each other and the one they have with government, stealing among individual citizens is wrong under all circumstances. Theft is a violation of the property rights of the victim. This is therefore an integral part of the relationship between government, which is fundamentally a group of people, and the citizens; theft is wrong under all circumstances, even when it is excused or emphasized as taxation of the rich to help the poor and needy. If it is wrong for an individual citizen to rob another, then it is equally wrong for that individual citizen to call upon the government, other human beings, to rob on his/her behalf because again, theft violates the proper relationship that the citizens have with each other, as well as the relationship citizens have with the government.
Similarly, if civilization is to have any hope of eliminating the tyranny brought upon it by the COVID-19 lock-downs and mandates, the people need to learn and consciously care about what their proper relationship is with other human beings, including the human beings in government, and commit to ALWAYS acting in accordance with that relationship, with no excuses or exceptions whatsoever.
The thing is though, almost every individual will have an answer to the question, “what is the proper relationship that you should have with other individuals, including the individuals in government?”. However, not everyone will have the same answer, and some will have conflicting answers with others. It is this conflict of understandings of the proper relationship with each other that functions as the root cause of problems and conflicts. Take the governments around the world in today’s times. Almost every government across the world believes that its relationship with the citizens is one of control and guaranteeing outcomes; even though the majority of citizens also feel this way, and most likely, only a minority of citizens believe that the relationship between government and the citizens is absolutely not one of control or guaranteeing outcomes, the proper relationship is not being acknowledged or acted upon. Therefore, because of conflicting understandings of the relationship between the citizens and the people in government, civilization inevitably fails, regardless of timing. The presence of conflicting understandings of what the proper relationship that human beings should have with each other leads to conflict, tyranny, and the failure of civilization; if these conflicting understandings are not resolved, civilization cannot avoid failure.
When it comes to COVID-19, the government portrays its relationship as one of protection against the disease and one of control, mainly of people’s liberties and activities, to achieve that protection. Although the government is lying about it’s care for public health, it is using that lie to fool the people into violating their relationship with government by willfully surrendering their liberties and coercing other citizens to follow suit, by complying with the COVID-19 lock-down orders, which violate both liberty and the proper relationship between government and the citizens.
None of the above is to say that people shouldn’t be allowed, or even discouraged, from forgiving others who make the mistake of violating the proper role of their relationship with other human beings. After all, almost all human beings have some flaws and make mistakes, even severe ones. If the relationship between an individual(s) and other individual(s) gets violated, the offended party has a right to forgive the offending party, and no other individual(s) that were not part of the conflict, even the individuals in government, have any right or authority to intervene in the forgiving process. The converse is also true; the offending party cannot compel the offended party if he/she does not desire to do so. In such a scenario where the offended party either demands retribution and has a reluctance to forgive, proper retribution must be made and proper punishment delivered to the party that violated the fundamental individual rights and liberties of the offended party. Additionally, the offended party cannot compel an unreasonable or excessive punishment or retribution for the violation committed by the offending party. For example, if someone is robbed of a pen, and the robber returns the pen after realizing his/her crime and offers a reasonable compensation fee, say the market price of a pen plus a 10% markup, the person robbed of his/her pen cannot reasonably demand the robber to pay an exorbitant fee, such as $1,000. Of course, if the robber does not return the pen and pay a reasonable fee for the theft, then that would be unreasonable, and criminal, of the robber.
In conclusion, the heart of resolving any human conflict, such as the conflict resulting from the tyrannical COVID-19 lock-downs and mandates, is establishing the proper understanding of the relationship that should be had between all people involved in the conflict, and then making a commitment to act in accordance with that proper relationship, without even the tiniest deviation or exception.
I have several comments.
First, you overall introductory premise (the root cause of societal/gov. failure) is not caused by the relationship between citizens and government. The root cause in humanity that leads to these violations in the proper role of government is because the majority of human beings are of fairly low overall true worth (intelligence, skills, moral values etc) and therefore susceptible to the lure of getting more value, position, and benefits than their truth worth allows in a true free market where everyone is free to judge another’s worth and economic value to them. That’s the lure of socialism and social justice programs. THAT is the engine of democratic tyranny of taking from the productive class and redistributing wealth to the “poor” That is the engine of hatred toward free markets and judgement. The erosion of government’s proper role is the result of this human weakness in the majority, not the cause.
Second, your premise about the proper role of government relative to fundamental rights is correct, but you’re missing a major component: The teaching of what constitutes true fundamental rights has NEVER been decided upon nor taught to the people. The principles of even our limited view of constitutionally enumerated rights were never based on a proper definition but simply taken from the most common rights in English Common law. Even these have never been taught directly in public schools either or linked to the “proper and limiting role of government” so how do you expect people to see your premise or be responsible for it? You yourself haven’t defined what constitutes a true fundamental right in your post.
You should probably take a look at my “law and Government” section at joelskousen.com where I define all these things and make a listing of fundamental rights.
As for the writing, I think you repeated your premise way too many times, You should have spent more time on showing people what constitutes a true fundamental right (life, freedom of action, contract, property ownership, self-defense, etc) vs a false one (education, welfare, benefits, medical care, etc)
That said, I appreciate your efforts. They just need some refining to be more effective. Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief